I was killing time the other day in a coffee-purveying establishment that was playing a classic rock channel on the in-store radio, and “Maggie May” came on. “What a great album,” thought I of Every Picture Tells a Story, “not a bad song on it.”
That got me thinking about whether it should be considered one of the quintessential albums of classic rock or not. Which means, of course, that we need to compile the list of the top ten quintessential albums of classic rock.
Note that these may or may not be your favorite albums, or may or may not even be by your favorite artists – but they’re the albums that you can’t understand the music of the late '60s and early '70s without.
My list so far:
Sticky Fingers
Abbey Road
Who’s Next
Dark Side of the Moon
Layla
Those five are absolutely on the list. The next three I think belong on the list, but I’d be willing to discuss the possibility that something else should be subsituted in for one of them. If you want to add another album, you need to specify which of these should come off the list.
Every Picture Tells a Story
Crosby Stills and Nash
American Beauty/Workingman’s Dead (All these years later, I still don’t understand why these were released separately – they function perfectly as a double album and I am happy to pretend that they actually were.)
I’m really undecided about the last two, but the following candidates have occurred to me:
Blonde on Blonde Hotel California The Doors Disraeli Gears Blind Faith Music from Big Pink
And one final note: I consider The Allman Brothers Live at the Fillmore and Joe Cocker’s Mad Dogs and Englishmen both damn close to perfect albums, and I can still listen to both of them repeatedly with enormous delight (which is very far from the case with most of these – I’m emphatically not an oldies listener in general), but I’m not sure if either of them belongs on the list.
So – whaddya think?
(Note: If you need to specify an artist, it probably doesn’t belong on the list. )
My 10, which includes a lot of the same artists, but with mostly different albums. Also, I tried not to duplicate artists or it’s be easy to fill slots 1-7 with Beatles albums:
Sgt. Pepper
Tommy
Highway 61 Revisited
Let It Bleed
Born to Run
Dark Side of the Moon
IV or ZoSo or whatever you want to call it
American Beauty
Tres Hombres
Raw Power
I don’t even like some of those albums, but I think many of them were genre-defining shifts within the broader category of classic rock, while others simply have incredible staying power.
Other albums I considered, in addition to the ones listed in the OP, were Pet Sounds, Anarchy in the UK, and Radio City.
In no particular order:
Abbey Road
Back in Black
Dark Side of the Moon
Are You Experienced?
Led Zeppelin 1
Not Fragile
Paranoid
What A Long Strange Trip It’s Been
Boston
Morrison Hotel
I like this list a lot. I’d take out Tres Hombres and MAYBE Born to Run, and add White Light / White Heat by Velvet Underground, and Everybody Knows This is Nowhere by Neil Young & Crazy Horse. I’m finding it hard to keep it to 10.
ETA : Shit, no Hendrix? Screw it, it’s impossible. Make it top 15, at least…
Allman Brothers Band at Fillmore East
Abbey Road
Let it Bleed
Are You Experienced?
The Band
Lola vs. Powerman and the Moneygoround
John Barleycorn Must Die
Blonde on Blonde
Tommy
Woodstock
Procol Harum (first album)
Meddle
Led Zeppelin IV
A Night at the Opera
Aqualung
Layla
Disraeli Gears
Ladies of the Canyon
Moondance
Mott
We’re Only In It for the Money
The Notorious Byrd Brothers
Workingman’s Dead
AC/DC - Back in Black
Aerosmith - Rocks
Beatles - Abbey Road
Cream - Disraeli Gears
Creedence Clearwater Revival - Green River **
Deep Purple - Machine Head
Doors - L.A. Woman
Jim Hendrix Experience - Are You Experienced?
Jethro Tull - Aqaulung** Led Zeppelin IV (“Zoso”)
Moody Blues - Days of Future Passed **
Pink Floyd - Dark Side of the Moon
Rolling Stones - Sticky Fingers
Yes- Fragile**
War Pigs - Black Sabbath Led Zeppelin IV - Led Zeppelin Who’s Next - The Who Bat Out of Hell - Meat Loaf The Doors - The Doors Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs - Derek and the Dominos Dark Side of the Moon - Pink Floyd The Ramones - The Ramones Moving Pictures - Rush Eliminator - ZZ Top
The Kinks Are the Village Green Preservation Society London Calling by the Clash My Aim Is True by Elvis Costello St. Louis to Liverpool by Chuck Berry What’s Going On by Marvin Gaye
Beatles - Revolver The Who - Who’s Next Springsteen - Born To Run Jethro Tull - Aqualung Rolling Stones - Sticky Fingers Cream - Disraeli Gears Boston - Boston Traffic - Low Spark of High Heeled Boys Led Zeppelin - Led Zeppelin II Supertramp - Crime of the Century
I find it hard to believe that only one person has listed Fleetwood Mac’s Rumors. Practically the whole album was released as singles!
Another album that I have a soft spot for is Never Mind the Bullocks: It’s the Sex Pistols but no one has mentioned it (and with a release in 1977, I would think that it’s outside of the “early 70s” requirement.
What do you mean exactly by the “late 60s and early '70s”? Judging from some of the responses, the two extremes seem to be 1967 (Cream’s Disraeli Gears) to 1981 in the UK or 1982 in the US (Human League’s Dare).
I am going to take the term as meaning 1967 through 1974 and suggest the following within these dates:
SPLHCB - Beatles
Exile on Main Street - Rolling Stones
Moondance - Van Morrison
Disraeli Gears - Cream
The Doors - The Doors
Machine Head - Deep Purple
The Eagles - The Eagles
IV/Zoso - Led Zeppelin
Who’s Next - The Who
Autobahn - Kraftwerk
By no means a “Top Ten” - I could easily make it a top 20! The whole “singer/songwriter” phase of popular music really put a dent into the idea of “rock” in the early '70s, too…
What do you mean by quintessential? If you’re saying that they needn’t be albums that you necessarily like, how do you judge them? By how much they influenced others? By how much they represented the times? By their cultural significance? Should they be defining examples of particular cultural movements, such as psychedelia, heavy metal, and folk? By how many other people you think like them? The best album by the best artists? Are you looking at the albums as representing the artist’s best achievement, or as a summation of what they achieved? If the latter, a ‘best of’ would probably be ideal.
The Beatles, Bob Dylan, Pink Floyd and Led Zeppelin are examples of artists who are probably thought to have defined that period, but isolating the album that is the most significant might be difficult. We’ve already had Revolver, Sgt Pepper and Abbey Road from the Beatles.
White Light/White Heat is an interesting example because it didn’t sell much at the time, but eventually has come to be seen as very influential on future musicians, whereas Sgt Pepper was influential at the time, but not so much now. Which qualifies?
So many questions, so few answers.
PS Although I too love ‘Every Picture’, is Rod Stewart a defining 60s/70s cultural figure? I don’t think he really qualifies.
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